I need a good fighting game for the PS2. Should I get Tekken Team Tournament or Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution? Believe it or not, I never played either series. I am a staunch old school 2d fan(SF and KI and MK). Both games are 20 bucks right now. VF is supposed to be the shit, but Tekken is rated much higher by gamespot. What do y'all think? Is Street Fighter EX3 any good? I've never played a 3d SF game either. My Street Fighter Alpha 3 disc got scratched and no longer works Anyway, any suggestions?

It depends what you are going for. Both games are great, but TTT is much easier to just jump into and play. A pro will still kick your @$$, but you'll be able to do cool looking moves off the bat. VF4 is hard to get even marginally good at, but it's the deepest fighter out there. There is counter upon counter upon reversal and the characters are much more balanced (no Eddy Gordo, Scrub Champion).

The Virtua Fighter series is to fighting games as Gran Turismo is to driving games. There's a learning curve up front, but once you're accustomed to the system and the controls, they're head-and-shoulders above the rest of their competitors. Once you find a character or two that suits your individual fighting style, you're off and running.

Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution _starting_ at $20 is the biggest bargain in the entire history of cheap things. I played the living hell out of VF4, and from all reports, the Quest mode in VF4:E is even better than the Kumite mode in VF4.

EDIT: There's nothing WRONG with Tekken, in and of itself. I've played through Tekken 2 and 3, plowing through one Arcade Mode with each of the characters, and there are a lot worse games out there. The VF games are simply excellent, however; between my Saturn, Dreamcast and PS2, I haven't missed one yet.

Soul Calibur 2 might be a good middle ground for a newcomer to 3D, if you can wait two weeks and spend the $50. (Or for the same $50, you could probably buy a Dreamcast AND Soul Calibur 1.) It's deeper than Tekken and more newcomer-friendly than VF4.

The comparison of VF to Gran Turismo is the problem, here. Neither is a game you can just pick up with a buddy and rock with, unless you've both devoted a ton of time getting past the intricacies and details that it takes to do anything more than fumble around looking like an idiot.

They're both just a bit too inaccessable, IMO. It'd be a bit better if there were more of a reward for mastering a character or whatever... that's one of my favoring things about the Tekken series, is the unlockable content.

See, that's the thing -- two novices can easily go head-to-head in Virtua Fighter and have a blast, trying out every character in the game and seeing what they can do. It's ABSOLUTELY a game that two newcomers can pick up and rock with, if they'll each take five seconds to look at the movelists and experiment with the moves a little bit. Novices can also easily jack down the CPU difficulty if they want to train solo against the computer and learn to do more than button-mash. It'll take a while to surpass experienced players, but what game isn't that true for?

As for unlockables, VF4 had Kumite mode, with progressive ranks and tons of unlockable items, plus the addictive Training Mode where you could "coach" a CPU fighter. VF4:E has Quest mode, with 1500+ items to collect, surpassing even Soul Calibur's event-battle mode. Good enough for me...

Tekken is also much much flashier. Akira seriously has no moves that look at all interesting (not to say that he is bad, but he doesn't do anything I couldn't see in Kung-Fu for NES). Compare the flashy drunken master (+ tiger style, Dragon, Panther, Crane, and Snake) to VF's resident drunken master. Tekken is an inferior raw game engine, but the variety (and crazy physics) in my eyes + the fact that a noob has even a slight chance, put it ahead of the technically superior VF.

Yeah, and how long does it take to become _proficient_ with Lei Wulong in Tekken, able to shift from stance to stance without thinking about it? Long enough that most newbies would switch to instant-gratification charactes like Paul, Eddy or Law.

Akira is pretty vanilla, but that's because his moves are based directly on a real Chinese martial art (hakkyoku-ken) that stresses quick, powerful, one-hit strikes. Real fighters don't generally whip out double-kickflips or glowing unblockable deathfists. Not that everything in VF is completely realistic, of course... but it's just a conscious choice by the game designers. VF stresses realism more than flash, and Tekken stresses flash more than realism, though both series have a little of each.

And I'm not a realism snob, either. I don't look at Tekken and say "a real fighter couldn't leap like that and kick three times before hitting the ground, therefore it's the Worst Game Ever." I own TTT, though I don't play it that much. I love Tobal 2, and that has fireballs and wacked-out characters with exaggerated moves. I play the Street Fighter series and love the Fatal Fury/KOF games. It's all in what I'm in the mood to play.

I just find it hard to recommend a three-year-old launch title (TTT) over a brand-new, critically-acclaimed fighter (VF4:E) when they're at the same price.

im a tekken fan, i think i may be one of the few here that prefer tekken4 to tekken tag, but tekken would prob catch the eye of the causual gamer, but VF has it in the depth dept, but there is just something about getting king and squashing the hell out of a noob with the rolling death cradle that gives me pleasure, or crushing someone in 6 seconds for both rounds, i think tekken may be a bit more fun, i still remeber the day i made this guy break his hand playing tekken, hey it was his fault, well maybe i shouldnt have laughed at him, or maybe i shouldnt have played him with one hand...i didnt know he had a anger problem i didnt make him punch the screen lol, :P, and since im on the tekken kick do u guys ever get glee in your eye when u see some one pick eddy :D,then u get either paul or hehatchi and hammerfist them to death? inve gone to too much of a tangent here, ive never play vf on any consol system but i think i may buy it today